Inyan

Looks like a very fine specimen and well worth the ride. My day was not nearly as adventurous. I spent a few hours working with the roses trying to get some of my cuttings into pots. Then I spent a few wee moments repotting my (SS02 x SS01) x Red Grandi seedlings into a medicine wheel type formation. I changed the soil out for those as well as the soil I had them in was almost 80% chicken/cow manure and as such it was holding in way too much moisture and stunting the roots. On a side note, the roots that were there were very thick for the most part. Just very short as well and not conducive to fast growing. So, while I did not kill my plants, I did give it a valiant effort to do so. I still have some pachanoi growing in this same mixture of mostly manure. The little red guy on top of that pachanoi is another (SS02 x SS01) x Red Grandi I am trying to push. I like growing my seedings in full sun which gives them a red color until they get a bit bigger. I am going to have to dig them out tomorrow and fluff the soil up as well as I simply don't think this experiment has what it takes to kill them and rather than loose them now... I think it behoves me to simply fluff their soil up as well.

Forgive me for the long delay in posting an update to this incredibly tiny graft. I know you are all on pins and needles waiting for it to fail. That last was said jokingly if there is any question. With that said and without further delay I present to you one of the worlds smallest multiple grafts done simultaneously.... She is alive both Dr.Jekyl and Hyde are growing like a Demon on Steroids. Sadly, the growing points are a bit further apart than I had wanted them to be as you can now see more clearly.

I like how we all have our own take on exact days to leave the cut to dry or whether to water after "x" number of weeks or not. What is important to me as a gardener is to find many ways to kill my plants. Only then will I know how far I can push them and how far I can not push them. With that said, @Pedropark has a method that will most assuredly work as well.

Great to have you here. Your pictures made me miss living in Belgium. Don't worry about how to root these T. bridgesii. Simply find some good gardening soil and stick your cacti in it. You can take your cuts now and dip the cut ends in sulfur dust. Allow them to dry over the weekend and then place in that nice gardening soil you bought. Don't worry about watering for the first few weeks. Just let it sit in that soil dry. After 2 weeks you can water so that the soil is wet. If you want to spruce things up a bit you can even add 50% perlite to your gardening soil. For what its worth, I've grown and rooted many T. brigesii this way with no ill effects. There certainly is no need to wait till any particular time of year for taking a cutting.

I select all my seedlings I want to graft and put them in cups of water, shot glasses, etc. to soak for 30 minutes before I make a graft like this. I make all my vertical cuts for a graft like this next. I start cutting just above the spines and stop just below them I then make my horizontal cuts last by cutting directly underneath the last spine. I then remove each wedge of tissue and quickly make my seedling cuts trying to give as large a surface area as possible while retaining as much tissue as possible as well. This usually entails me cutting the bottom portion closest to the roots but the most swollen. From there, I simply place the seedling where the wedge of tissue has been removed at the bottom. I then slide the seedling up just a bit so the ledge or seat is not touching the seedling. I find that sometimes the ledge will grab ahold of the seedling as it dries out and pull the seedling just far enough from the stock that the graft will not take. It is best to use an actively growing stock in my opinion if your plan on grafting seedlings or areoles to areoles like this. As long as that is taken care of and you don't water either for a few days until the wounds have dried and calloused over then you should find good success with this method. It never hurts to make a humidity dome either to keep this type of graft in if your weather is not too humid. I use plastic bottles for such which are nice given that you can slowly change the humidity by loosening and removing the cap. A cut into the side of the bottle is of course needed to enable the graft to be placed inside which I tape up so I don't have to worry about it.

I love it when you get a little present like that. We are dealing with some down pours of rain right along with a category 5 hitting Florida and going who knows where now so I'm just hoping my cacti are all still here in the next few days. Good to see yours are not just looking good, but excelling.

Excellent post. I've grown B. cappi from cuttings as well in Florida. What I've noticed is that in St. Augustine it can take a few months before noticeable growth is seen from pencil sized hardwood cuttings. I've also noticed that if there is a green node buried beneath the surface that is encouraged to grow up through the surface that growth is generally much faster and vigorous than any hardwood portion with green attached above the surface. That node buried beneath the surface will also tend to grow thicker faster than a hardwood portion. For an area such as St. Augustine, Florida where it sometimes freezes I would frequently bury very large sections of fresh green vine still attached to the mother vine in long sections 15 ft long just a few inches below the surface of the ground. I did this as we sometimes had freezes which would knock out the above ground vine, but would leave the longer buried pieces of vine alone. Thus, when a light freeze hit that took out our vine... we would be left with a very large root system and a very large thin vine from which many new vines could spring up out of the ground after danger of frost was gone. Admittedly, this is a lot of work and time consuming to do each year, but it ensured the vines grew rapidly and reached the tops of the trees very quickly each year in an area that was not ideal to grow B. cappi in. I've received cuttings shipped and rooted them as well when I was getting started with B. cappi. You don't need anything other than a straight piece the diameter of a pencil works fine. I'm sure the added "T" at the bottom helps, but for many they may not have access to such a cutting and while it may help... B. cappi can root without that as well. Nor does it need to be cut in an "L" shape with a heal. All B. cappi needs is a long slender cutting and things will be fine. That has been my experience. I am sure that the added area for root growth does help however. I hope this information adds to rather than detracts from your already great post.

Zelly has some amazing crosses. These seedlings are all from Zelly's seeds and all were grafted on a cutting that was not rooted.

Sounds like someone wants to do some grafting. My only question since this whole thing is sorted is will you be making some seedling grafts, areole grafts, or... enquiring minds want to know. Wish you good skill in your endeavor.

Active growth readily seen on these two seedlings grafted together when still at the cotyledon stage of growth. The graft seam is starting to disappear as well between the two seedlings. I'm waiting for everyone to start posting their own cotyledon grafts on here as I've posted enough pictures to show how easy they are to perform. Come on folks... where are your cotyledon grafts? No fear, I will continue to update this cotyledon graft for you folks so you can see how the little Zelly develops.